Christmas Spirit
by Tierfal
Summary: All of the tables in the library are full... except one. An impudent little seasonal Dramione.
1. We Wish You a Merry Christmas

_Author's Note: So… I basically was having problems getting to sleep, and instead of trying to clear my mind and relax like a normal person, I thought up a Dramione. Her and Me fans, hopefully this will tide all of us over until the sequel that I have promised you. In theory, anyway. As of now, I have not even the faintest inkling of a plot._

_And, as you will probably be able to tell, I, unlike slightly-OOC Draco, ADORE Christmas._

_This fic is four chapters, and I will be updating every two days, at approximately four or five PM Pacific Standard Time, because I am a Pacific Standard kind of girl. Thus will we conclude on the twenty-third, in time for you to have your own Christmas adventures back in the real world. Provided that we even remember what the real world is…_

* * *

CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

_Chapter I:_

_We Wish You a Merry Christmas_

Clutching his books and setting his jaw, Draco Malfoy strode through the towering rows of the library shelves, arranging impassivity on his expression as he looked at one table after another. Each specimen was full to capacity of students diligently poring over thick books—or diligently poring over each other on the premise of poring over thick books, toying with their hair and batting their eyelashes.

Draco hated Christmas. All the love and goodwill towards men and excuses for flirting and decorations and festivity and crap like that. It was so… _annoying_…

Clearly, given the nauseating quality of the season, the unadulterated indignity of wandering the library searching for a place to sit, and the fact that _everyone_ was getting a lovely view of Draco Malfoy meandering aimlessly like an _idiot_, this couldn't get any worse.

But then, of course, it did.

As it turned out, not all of the tables in the library were full after all. Rather, at the farthest end of the library, buried within the stacks like a forgotten treasure, there was one table that had only a single occupant.

Inwardly fuming like an overzealous smokestack, Draco gritted his teeth, dropped his books onto the tabletop, and sat down across from Hermione Granger.

She spared him a glance and a raised eyebrow before sticking her nose in her own dusty book again. Her utter indifference stung more than a direct insult. If there was one thing Draco couldn't _stand_, it was not being the center of attention. Accordingly, he batted his book cover open irritably and shuffled through to the page he wanted.

The hours slipped away almost mischievously. Beyond the wide windows, the evening deepened to indigo, then to black, and the candles within the library flared into life. Though Draco could now successfully see the cramped type of the words he was attempting to study, the candles' flames didn't do much for the chill—and, rather, danced mockingly as he glared at them for this egregious shirking of their duties. Draco frowned and huddled a little in his coat, nestling his chin deeper in his scarf, dreaming of central heating.

Before long, his eyes had begun to burn, apparently in protest of their owner's attempts to decipher the tiny print of the textbook. He rubbed at them and glanced up from the page.

Granger was chewing on her cuticle as she read, and her cuticle, in response, was sending forth a trickle of thick crimson liquid.

Draco paused. It was always a tricky decision, whether or not to be a decent human being.

He sighed. Maybe there was a little bit of Christmas spirit in him after all.

"You're bleeding," he reported flatly.

Granger started and blinked at him. "What?"

He pointed. "You're bleeding," he repeated.

She looked at her finger, murmured "Oh," and stuck her fingertip in her mouth.

Draco wrinkled his nose. It was so… _unsanitary_… Then again, he couldn't expect much better from a girl who lived joined to the Pothead at one hip and to Weasel Boy at the other.

She saw the way he was looking at her and frowned around her finger, which was unbecoming at best. "What are you even doing here, Malfoy?" she inquired.

Brevity was, and ever would be, the soul of wit. Eloquently, he gestured to his book.

Granger frowned a little more, and a bit of a crease appeared between her eyebrows.

"What are _you_ doing here, Granger?" he heard himself inquire airily. "In fact, what are you even doing at this school, since you already know everything there is to learn?"

The faint smile that lighted on Granger's lips made it quite evident that Draco needed to work on his delivery. He had intended that as an insult—something of a slightly more sophisticated and personalized incarnation of "Go home, Granger." Instead, she had apparently taken it—albeit warily, given its source—as a compliment.

Draco's shudder had nothing to do with the cold.

"Well," Granger said then, that hideous smile still darting playfully over her face, "I don't think it's possible to test out of Hogwarts."

"And if it was, you would?" he inquired pointedly.

To his horror and dismay, her smile flickered a little wider and a little stronger. One of her eyebrows trespassed upward into the realm of her forehead guarded by her unruly bangs, which in themselves testified to the fact that the girl couldn't even keep track of her own grooming. "If I didn't know better," she remarked, "I'd think you didn't hate me, Draco Malfoy."

This—_this_—was just too much.

"You would know much better," he spat, wondering which rock that spitting impulse had been hiding under all this time, "if you had a _brain_, Mudblood."

The bright glimmer of amusement went out of Granger's eyes, and she pressed her lips into a thin line. Draco, snatching up his books, getting them slightly tangled in his scarf in his hurry, drew himself up to his full height and looked down his nose at her for a moment.

"Good _evening_," he sniffed. Then he turned on his heel and made for the exit, almost as bewildered as he was incensed.

In the muddle of his reactions, he knew one thing for sure: He was never coming to the library _ever again_.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

While Draco hadn't _really_ thought that that pledge would hold much water, he _had_ rather hoped it might last more than twelve hours. Of course, he hadn't counted on the indomitable Christmas spirit of one Pansy Parkinson, witch.

As Draco Malfoy discovered the next morning, said Pansy Parkinson, witch, was the most diabolical creature ever to walk the Earth.

When Draco had finished preening in the mirror for about an hour—a necessary activity, if he was to appear in his outward aspect every bit as godlike as merited by his interior mettle—he strolled down the stairs, trailing his fingers along the banister, and entered a common room empty but for three young men, some forlorn-looking wreaths and some gaudy red bows, and a sinful quantity of tinsel.

Crabbe, Goyle, and Zabini were all engaged in death-glaring a red and green paper construction a bit like a Howler, but with wings—which it was utilizing to flap eagerly around the room in a vague circular formation, swooping at the room's occupants at intervals. The flying, however, was nothing more than a nuisance. The root of the real problem—enough to madden a man in minutes—was the singing.

"_WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, WE _WISH_ YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!_"

A muscle in Blaise's jaw twitched.

What the contraption's singing lacked in melody and key, it made up for in volume. It was loud, shrill, and imparting good tidings to one and one's kin, and it needed to _die_.

Draco's bubbling rage stopped his throat, which succeeded in releasing a single, choking word: "_Who_?"

The other three boys' faces darkened in unison, and together they uttered precisely the name Draco had known they would:

"Pansy."

Draco considered the festive fiend darting around the eaves. His eyes narrowed. "Let's kill it," he said.

The chase that ensued would have been supremely comic if it hadn't been even more supremely humiliating. There was a lot of leaping, a lot of diving, a lot of shouting, and a lot of failing to apprehend the monster plaguing the Slytherin stronghold.

"_Accio demonic Christmas carol thing_!" Draco cried desperately, brandishing his wand as it zeroed in on him, beating its wings hard. "_Accio, accio, acci—AUUGH_!"

In the process of nudging at his head, possibly in an effort to convince him to sing along, the beast had become stuck in his hair. _Stuck_ in his _hair_. Stuck in _his_ hair—his beautiful, beautiful, _beautiful_ hair. It began to demand figgy puddings, and Draco felt a bit faint. There were only so many horrors a man could _take_ in one morning.

Flailing, Blaise managed to knock the thing free. He also managed to poke Draco in the eye and slap him across the face, but beggars being assaulted by possessed Christmas decorations could not be choosy.

"Idea," Crabbe announced. Before Draco could express his shock at this unprecedented event, the lumbering boy had jogged up the stairs and, momentarily, returned with a Beater bat.

Draco had never before found himself in awe of Vincent Crabbe's utter _brilliance_.

And probably never would do again, but that was a different problem.

Crabbe planted his feet shoulder-width apart, raised the bat, and waved it idly, his small, dark eyes following the soaring origami abomination as it performed a loop-de-loop and then came straight for him.

With one perfect, powerful, flattening stroke, Crabbe sent the thing slamming into the opposite wall, where it crumpled and slid to the floor.

All present sucked in a collective joyous breath to release as a wild cheer. It was dead, it was destroyed, it was defeated, it was—

—stuck.

"_WE WISH—WISH—WISH—WISH—WISH—WISH—_"

Curled fingers yanking at his hair, Blaise gave a feral howl that degenerated rapidly into a rather girlish scream.

Biting back a similar wail of his own, Draco fled to the library.


	2. Deck the Halls

_Author's Note: I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to all the newcomers. Yay newcomers! Soon you will all come to discover what a dork I am, and will either be very endeared to me or very efficiently scared away._

_Question for the lovely Australians—did one of you recommend me to the others, or did you all find this fic independently?_

* * *

_Chapter II:_

_Deck the Halls_

Cold fea—a vague, trifling sort of anxiety climbed Draco's ribcage, its silver fingers cutting his chest, as he saw that the library was, once again, packed full of people. And not just any people—_Hufflepuffs_ and _Ravenclaws_ and _Gryffindors_. (A little voice in the back of his head reminded him that this trend was not too surprising given that they, too, attended this school, but he ignored it.) They weren't just _any_ scum of the Earth, however: they were _jolly _scum of the Earth. They were cheery and hearty and happy and disgusting, and they were all positively _dripping_ with Christmas spirit.

Draco clung tighter to his book-bag and tried not to gag. He couldn't possibly sit with _those_ people—what if it was _contagious_?

He was gnawing on his lip as he progressed all the way to the far end of the library. Surely there was _one_ table that was occupied by neither Christmas freaks nor the slightly more mundane, big-toothed, bushy-haired kind of freak—the usual specimen of which once again hadn't even bothered to notice him? Surely…?

_And then there was_. Draco darted over to it, cackling inwardly, and was about to sling his bag onto it triumphantly when he saw that its surface was coated in… _gunk_.

This was not the kind of gunk one could wipe nonchalantly away with a sleeve or a silver-and-green-monogrammed handkerchief or a paper napkin; oh, no. This was Grade A Gunk. It looked like Hagrid had sneezed on the tabletop, or like someone had vomited figgy pudding all over it. Draco didn't know exactly what figgy pudding _was_, but he imagined it looked a hell of a lot like this _gunk_, black and thick and largely coagulated, with big clumps of _something_.

Now Draco faced a bit of a dilemma: Which did he hate more—gunk, or Granger?

Seething, Draco pulled out the chair across from Granger's and sat down in it. She deigned to glance at him once before returning her attention to her textbook. She said nothing.

The whole ignoring-him-instead-of-getting-riled-up thing was becoming extremely obnoxious.

Draco had slogged through a whole chapter of Charms reading before a table not far away burst out in merry laughter. Draco would have given his left kidney to have Crabbe's Beater bat in hand, but as it was, he could do nothing but frown sourly at them.

That, and pull out a sheet of paper and begin listing what _he_ would like to dole out for the Twelve Days of Christmas.

_Eight nooses hanging,  
Seven muskets firing,  
Six swords a-swinging,  
Five headstones,  
Four Bowie knives,  
Three big sticks,  
Two Beater bats,  
And a Dungbomb in the Great Hall._

He wasn't sure where the machetes should come in, and he was having trouble getting "jugular veins a-severed" to scan.

"Not big on Christmas spirit?" Granger asked.

Draco looked up. There was a hint of a smirk in her smile.

"The only thing I would like to deck the halls with," he informed her curtly, "is Parkinson's entrails."

She laughed, and it sounded like Christmas should—like sleigh bells jingling in the snow, harmonizing with horses' hooves clattering over the snowy cobblestones; like church bells tolling through the brittle air of a chilly morning, the cold thawed by the warmth of quiet joy within. Like the whisper of ribbon over wrapping paper and the soft, gleeful breath exhaled by someone you loved when they opened the perfect gift.

Draco realized what he was thinking and forcefully reminded himself that he was, and would ever be, a _Bah, humbug_ kind of person.

Granger regarded the top of his head now, her eyebrows wandering upward over the expanses of her forehead again. "What happened to your hair?" she inquired.

Suddenly, with the approximate force of a freight train crashing into his brain, it hit Draco that he hadn't fixed his hair after his battle with Pansy's carol demon. Tentatively, he lifted a trembling hand to assess the extent of the damage and, heart plummeting like a Dungbomb in the Great Hall, found that it was worse even than he'd predicted. His hair was _everywhere_.

Less than an hour after the first one, he was facing another wretched predicament, this one based on the overarching Malfoy tenet of pride: was it more degrading to be seen with his hair in disarray, or to seek aid from a Mudblood?

"Do you have a comb?" he asked, sighing a little.

She rummaged in her bag and then handed him one of the plain black variety—which struck Draco as odd, given that she never seemed to _use_ such a device. Perhaps she simply didn't know how it worked, and after seeing him demonstrate, she would achieve a sort of coif-oriented enlightenment.

He wondered if his cynicism was coming true on him again when she frowned watching him fix his hair.

"What?" he prompted.

"Nothing," she answered.

Why was it that when girls said "Nothing," they always meant "Everything"?

He paused, comb-wielding arm poised, probably looking extraordinarily dashing. "_What_?" he repeated.

Granger became very interested in the shelf behind him. "Well, _I_ don't know." Clearly, she _did_, or she wouldn't have said anything. And she wouldn't be opening her mouth to say a little more anything. "Just that… it looked nice that way."

Draco stared at her.

She saw him staring, and although a little bit of a blush bloomed pink in her cheeks, she met his eyes. "It looked more natural. More human, almost."

Draco continued to stare at her.

The blush deepened. It was her turn to ask the immortal one-word question. You had to be equitable about these things. "What?" she managed.

"Nothing," he said. Two could play at that say-the-opposite-of-what-you-meant game girls loved so much. "Just that I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be, you know, _brave_."

An eyebrow flicked up. She knew where this was going.

Well, of course she did; she was Granger. Granger knew _everything_.

"As opposed to?" she permitted.

"Crazy," he concluded.

Her smile was patronizing. "Ha," she yielded.

"'Ha' yourself," Draco muttered. He pushed the comb, and it skidded over the table to her. No way he was handing that thing back to her, putting him at risk of one of those insufferably awkward accidental-fingers-touching moments. Nauseated by the very abstract thought, he returned to his reading.

But not for long.

"What are you working on?" Granger inquired.

Draco wasn't sure whether she was compelled by the Gryffindor mandate of sticking one's nose into absolutely everything, or by her own compulsive desire to know all that there was to know about everyone there was to know of. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, though he also wasn't sure which explanation that 'benefit' applied to.

"Charms," he answered. He had intended to leave it at that, but he heard himself adding details. "All that, you know, swish-y, flick-y crap—I always get lost somewhere between the instruction and the execution."

Granger tilted her head to the right a little. "It's not hard," she said slowly.

He felt his anger mounting, the fragments coalescing like a gathering storm. "Not all of us," he snapped, "know everything before the teacher even says it, _Granger_."

"Not all of us," she shot back, her eyes flashing, "are too stubborn to ask for help when we need it, _Malfoy_."

"No help at all is better than _Mudblood_ help, _Granger_."

"Coming down off your high horse is better than failing your _classes_, _Malfoy_."

"You've never failed a class in your _life_."

"Neither have _you_."

"Exactly why I don't need _your_ help."

"You're just too full of yourself to _ask_."

"Am I?" Draco had shoved his chair back and was on his feet now, the better to look down at Granger imperiously. He had to conserve his status one way or another. "Am I _really_?"

"Yes," Granger replied equably. "You are."

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco noticed that people were giving them weird looks. Again with the dilemmas—better to be a sideshow for bored kids in the library, or to let Granger think she'd won?

Wearily, he sat down. "So help me, then," he grumbled.

Granger smiled.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"What you need," Granger was saying as they exited the library, "is a Cheering Charm."

"Har, har," Draco responded.

"No, really. I don't think I've ever seen you laugh. Not _genuinely_, anyway."

He glanced at her. She was watching him, eyebrows in action as always, her ridiculous hair bouncing along behind her, an absolutely ludicrous quantity of books in her arms.

"Not much to laugh about," he noted. A gentleman would have offered to carry her books in an instant, but Draco Malfoy was not a gentleman.

He was a _nobleman_. There was a considerable difference.

Granger smiled at him, a small, secretive little smile. Against his will, Draco wished he knew the secret. "Laughter," Granger told him pleasantly, "is the only sane reaction to life."

Draco considered. "I thought that was cold-blooded murder," he remarked.

She laughed, and he couldn't help but smirk a little.


	3. Let It Snow

_Author's Note: It never snows where I live, which is probably why I love it so much. I've heard it's actually pretty overrated if you have to live with it on a regular basis…_

* * *

_Chapter III:_

_Let It Snow_

The next day, it snowed. Tiny flakes pulled themselves free of the clouds and spiraled towards the Earth, raining down like divine dandruff.

Draco watched the swirling and the rushing and the wonder through the wide library window. Just about everyone was out there, playing in the snow, reveling in it, their eyes wide, their laughter overflowing, as if it was the first time again.

And he was here, crammed between the dusty shelves, planted in an uncomfortable chair, to study Charms.

Then he remembered that someone severely lacking in Christmas spirit wouldn't want to go frolic in the snow anyway, and he pushed all thoughts of frolicking from his mind.

Granger arrived, precisely on time, and sat down across from him. A glance confirmed that, yes, the oddity strung around her neck was a length of green ribbon punctuated with tiny colored light-bulbs that she had somehow enchanted to blink off and on in different patterns.

Draco was beginning to think that he was the only person in the universe who thought Christmas was a load of tripe compounded with lameness, stupidity, and saccharine messages about peace, love, and other such things that the world would never realize in any meaningful way.

"Hi," Granger said.

"Afternoon," Draco responded, neutrally enough, the window drawing his eyes again.

"Draco," Granger said. "Are we friends?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "We are still on a last-name basis, _Granger_."

Infuriatingly—and what a tremendous shock _that_ was—Granger merely smiled. "Well, boys call each other by their last names all the time."

"You are not a boy," Draco reminded her.

"You called Pansy 'Parkinson' yesterday," she replied calmly.

"Parkinson," he noted, "currently holds the number one position on my list of people to messily dismember, and as such, had been demoted to boy status until further notice." He did not mention that his list included just about everyone at Hogwarts if you went down far enough. Granger was probably hovering somewhere around number fifty today.

"So you're admitting that girls are superior to boys," Granger observed.

Forty-nine.

Draco opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. "No," he said.

"Well, that isn't very logical, Mister Malfoy," she told him lightly.

Forty-eight, forty-seven, forty-six.

He frowned. "Can we just do some Charms?" he asked pointedly.

Now, Draco hated Charms. In fact, he hated Charms with the blazing power of a thousand flaming suns. But he hated losing to Granger even more. It was a lesser-of-two-great-and-overpowering-evils kind of thing.

Her smile was, once again, far too knowing for his liking, but there wasn't much to be done about that, so he mostly just tried to concentrate on the letters on the page instead of the crinkles at the corners of her eyes.

It wasn't long before she was _correcting_ him again. He wished she could just stoop to be _wrong_ about something for once in her life, but it wasn't looking likely. He wasn't sure if Hermione Granger was capable of being wrong. She might spontaneously combust if she were to realize she'd made an error. The very thought of how awful all that wild hair would smell succumbing to the flames made Draco's stomach perform an elaborate acrobatics routine that concluded with a standing backflip.

Before he knew it, Granger, like a striking snake, had moved around the table, the better to scrutinize his lackadaisical wand-flicking. "You're supposed to be making a _U_ shape," she informed him.

"This _is_ a _U_ shape," Draco retorted automatically.

Granger considered, an eyebrow rising. "Your handwriting," she said, "must be nigh on illegible."

He graced that morsel of sparkling wit with a sardonic look. Before he had time to do much else, she had snatched his hand in hers—guiding him like she was teaching him to write after all.

"Like _that_," she explained unnecessarily, her eyes bright and clear as they followed the movement of his wand. She paused, and then, as abruptly as she had caught it, released his hand, freeing it to swim unfettered through the air once more. "Understood?" she prompted, looking almost a little bewildered.

Draco felt one of his own eyebrows creeping up his forehead. (This was a good thing. He rather doubted he would have enjoyed an invasion from one of someone else's.) "Quite," he answered.

Granger returned to her seat, toying with her absurd necklace. "Try it, then," she suggested.

He did, and it worked. Perhaps there was something to this whole _U_-shaped theory of hers after all.

Not that a comfortable stint in the iron maiden could have gotten a confession of that out of him. Thumbscrews would also have been woefully inadequate, as would have the rack.

Draco was very good about things like that.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Oh!" Granger cried. There was a flurry of movement as she jammed books in her bag and swept her hair out of her eyes. An ink bottle tipped; Granger reached for it and only knocked it over. "Damn it—"

"_Tergeo_," Draco supplied, flicking his wrist lazily. The ink collected, coalesced, and poured obediently back into the glass container, refilling it. He then plucked the rubber stopper from the table and stuffed it in the top.

Granger smiled ruefully and blew out a breath that made her bangs dance. "Thanks," she said, jamming the offending ink bottle in her bag as well. "I've got to go meet Harry and Ron for dinner—what do you say, nine-thirty tomorrow?"

_Eeeeaaaarrrllllyyyyyy,_ Draco's brain groaned. But he couldn't tell Granger a thing like _that_. A Malfoy was supposed to be primed, ready, and on his guard at all hours of the day, including the ones that were cruel enough to take place in the morning. He shrugged his acquiescence. He would just _will_ himself to get up on time.

Granger beamed. "Great," she decided. She waved cheerily, and then she went skipping out, her hair bouncing around her shoulders again, her overfilled bag straining on the verge of explosion, little light-bulb necklace twinkling merrily.

Draco tried to study a little more, but his eyes wandered from the dark spots on the page to the white ones still floating downward from the clouds. What glimpses of sky he could see were darkening, and most of the erstwhile revelers were retreating inside again, having sufficiently defiled the snow with their cavernous footsteps and their scraped-up snowballs and their malformed snow angels.

His things almost leapt into his bag, and it seemed mere moments later that he was there in it, the brilliance of the snowfall fading with the light, the most persistent of the crystals winking faintly as dusk drew its curtains slowly closed. He raised his face to the sky, and tiny flakes dropped cold kisses on his cheeks, his nose, and his forehead, only to melt and run like tears.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The next morning, when Draco managed to rouse himself and glance at the clock, he discovered that there existed approximately six last, lingering minutes before the time he'd arranged to meet with Granger. After exercising some of the choice four-letter words in his expansive vocabulary, he scrambled out of bed, became tangled in his sheets, fell on his face, fought his way to his feet, threw on the first clothes he encountered, grabbed his bag, and blundered his way down the stairs still tugging his vest on.

Only when he was draped over a chair in the library, a full minute early and panting hard, did he discover the metal pin attached to his lapel: a tiny bright green wreath bedecked with a ruby-red bow.

"What the—"

He attempted to remove it, and it bit him.

"_OW_!"

Naturally, Hermione Granger, her hair brushed and shining, her clothing neat, her bag slung casually over one shoulder, chose that moment to arrive. Amusement lit up her face.

"Endorsing a little bit of Christmas spirit after all?" she inquired pleasantly.

"Parkinson," Draco gritted out, "is much too tall. Accordingly, as soon as I find a sufficiently sharp object, I will be abbreviating her at the neck."

Granger smiled. "I think," she said, "that you probably secretly love Christmas."

"I think," Draco shot back, "that you certainly and very obviously are wrong."

The smile continued to dart around her face as she opened the cover of her book and pretended to focus on it. "I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree."

"By which you mean," Draco corrected, "that you'll have to agree to concede your error."

Her smile only widened a bit more.

Draco was about eighty percent sure that he was going to be stark, raving mad by Christmas.


	4. Silver Bells

_Author's Note: Game, set, match, folks._

_MERRY CHRISTMAS! I LOVE YOU ALL!_

* * *

_Chapter IV:_

_Silver Bells_

When Draco awoke the next morning, the dormitory was quiet—none of Blaise's muttering about who had offended him this time; none of Crabbe's persistent snoring at a decibel level dangerous to the eardrum. Just… quiet. Quiet enough for Draco to hear his own breathing and listen to the rustle of his sheets as he shoved them off of his legs, exposing his body to the nipping cold of the air. Quiet enough for the sound of his bare feet padding on the carpet to be audible as he moved to the window and looked out.

Snow had fallen again. Perhaps that explained the muted gentleness that had settled in the room much in the way that the snow had spread evenly over everything outside. Perhaps there was something sacred about it.

Well, unless you were Pansy Parkinson.

Draco flopped down on one of the cushy green couches in the common room, determined not to see Granger today. Yes, he was going to make a _change_. He was going to _take control_ and be an _active force_ and demonstrate other phrases gleaned from the back covers of self-help books as well. He didn't want to see Granger? No problem. He didn't have to see Granger. He would employ his best not-seeing-Granger strategy, and he would get _results_.

Given, his strategy was to cower in the common room like a spurned stray, but that was a different problem.

All was quiet here as well, but for the faint creaking of the couch springs as he shifted and the whisper of the pages of his textbook. Draco noticed that Pansy had acquired a few specimens of some sort of evergreen garland punctuated by red satin bows and had lined the backs of all the couches with them.

It was very festive and stylish. If by "festive and stylish," you meant "tacky and disgusting."

Before long, Draco found himself drifting, which didn't unduly surprise him given how mind-numbingly _boring_ Charms was, always had been, and always would be. He was willing enough to drift for a while, his mind meandering down the river on a raft cobbled together from a few planks and some twine, poling at the banks when necessary, the sunlight dropping diamonds on the crests of the rippling waves…

When he started awake from the strange and slightly psychedelic dream his unconscious mind had been entertaining, his first sensations were of itchiness and anguish. Then his eyes came fully open, and he discovered that he was being strangled by a Christmas garland.

His first thought was, _What a stupid way to die._

His second thought was, _WHAT THE HELL…?!_

Gasping, he fought his wand out.

"_Flagrate_! _Flagrate_! _Fla—gra—t_…"

One of the sparks finally decided to catch, and the garland made a very faint and nonetheless very unnatural squealing noise as it began to smolder and then to shrivel. A wave of unwelcome heat hit Draco in the face, and the suffocating pain in his neck, which he had not thought could become more excruciating, managed to do just that. Desperately he batted at the writhing vine, and, a few needles crumbling, the flames licking at his fingertips, it gave, sending singed fragments of pine needles and red bows tumbling to the floor. There they continued to whine distantly, and Draco collapsed on the couch, panting. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw one of the other garlands twitch.

In a flash of green, silver, and terror, he was out of the common room and halfway up the stairs that led to the rest of the castle.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was bitterly cold outside. _Bitterly_. Draco found himself very much begrudging the weather, though he strongly suspected much of the bitter coldness might have resulted from his lacking a coat.

And a scarf.

And a hat.

And gloves.

And just about all warm accessories that might have ameliorated this whole bitterly-cold state of being.

See, this was what _happened_ when Pansy sent her demon-garlands out to _kill_ innocent individuals who were _trying_ to _study_—or, rather, to sleep. But sleeping and studying were essentially the same thing anyway. Whatever the case, the observation that Parkinson was pretty much the most evil creature the world had ever seen brooked no argument. Voldemort would have fled her decorations screaming like a little girl. Which, incidentally, was pretty much what Draco Malfoy had done.

Draco wrapped his arms around himself tightly and kicked at the snow while he muttered a little about how best to maim Pansy beyond recognition. Afterwards, he felt a little better.

Or, at least, he did until he heard some rather-too-familiar voices.

"You're not hearing me, Ron. _Listen_."

"Okay, I'm listening."

"Are you?"

"I said I was."

"But _are_ you?"

"What is this, some kind of reverse-psychology thing? I _said_ I _was_."

At that moment, the despicable little triumvirate that was Granger, Potter, and Weasley turned the corner.

There went his not-seeing-Granger plan. Draco didn't understand why all of his best-laid plans always had to go directly to hell. He at least would have liked to take the scenic route every once in a while. Was that really too much to ask?

Weasley's and Potter's faces darkened as they saw him. Draco tried, once again, to figure out which of them he hated more and, once again, found himself at an impasse. Potter's obsession with saving everyone from everything at every opportunity was certainly enough to test a man's patience, but so was Weasley's impressively unadulterated stupidity.

Perhaps they were simply equally obnoxious.

Granger's face, painting a striking contrast with those of her fellows, brightened as she caught sight of Draco. As if that wasn't enough, she then came running up and grinned at him, splashes of a rosy pink lighting on her cheekbones, her ridiculous hair once again falling into her face.

Then she paused, and her smile faded a little.

"You don't look so good," she reported. She squinted, and then her eyes widened. "Are those—_burn_ marks?"

"Suffice to say," Draco responded equably, "that Parkinson is living on borrowed time."

She stared at him.

"It's fine," he told her flatly.

She didn't look like she believed him, but she gathered her steam again and recommenced where she'd intended to begin. "I've got something for you," she announced, partly breathlessly excited, partly quite pleased with herself.

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you?"

Her grin returned in force. "I have." She pushed her _scarf_ aside and delved a _gloved_ hand into the pocket of her _coat_—Draco tried not to be jealous, but it didn't work—and thence retrieved a tiny object wrapped in gold paper. It was this object that she pushed at him with an insistence that verged on anxiousness. She seemed so intent upon his receiving it that he accepted it without a fight.

The paper crumpled beneath his fingers and then yielded, and he found himself cradling in the palm of his hand a little silver bell with a wooden handle. It was cold, shining, and lovely, and he wasn't sure what to say.

"Hold it by your ear," Granger urged him breathlessly.

Taken slightly aback by the strangeness of the request, he obliged. From somewhere deep within the instrument's core, he detected, ever so faintly, the beautifully haunting strains of the Carol of the Bells.

Almost a little bewilderedly, he looked at her. "Th… ank you," he managed.

She positively beamed. "I got the idea from the golden eggs in the Triwizard Tournament," she explained, revving up for a full-fledged chatter-fest. "You can only hear it when it's activated by the heat of someone's skin really close by—I had a lot of trouble with that; I didn't want it to start going crazy in the middle of summer or anything, so I had to—"

He kissed her, partly to shut her up, and partly for other reasons entirely.

And he did derive a sadistic sort of glee from the cries of anguish and revulsion that issued loudly from Harry and Ron.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There was a knock at the door of his bedroom. Draco looked up.

"Come in," he permitted.

The door opened to admit his father, who was dressed to the hilt in stately black and green, his hair tied back, his favorite mask of impassivity firmly set.

"The guests are beginning to arrive," he announced.

Draco, sitting at his desk, smoothed his dress shirt and flicked the creases out of his slacks. He glanced at himself in the mirror; his hair looked much the same way it had when he had rolled out of bed a few spare hours before. He smiled to himself, and then he turned to his father again.

"Give me a minute?" he hazarded.

Lucius Malfoy paused and then nodded. "Come down as soon as you can," he noted.

"All right," Draco agreed.

Lucius retreated, and Draco set down a tiny silver bell and picked up his comb.

Somehow, it seemed like it would be all right, one way or another.

Maybe Christmas wasn't so bad after all. You know, provided that it only insisted on coming once a year, and all.

* * *

_Author's Note: Sorry to stick a note in at the end, but if you're wallowing in sorrow at the ending of this epic masterpiece and dying for more entertainment, you can go check out my website. There are some pretty amusing graphics, back-stories for every fic, and a lot of me rambling about this, that, and the other. Go on! Look at it! Make me feel popular and vindicate the unnecessary hours I've put into it!_


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